Water Pollution

Proposition 1 has passed, AP reports. It authorizes state officials to borrow $7.12 billion and repurpose $425 million in bonds approved earlier to pay for new water projects. The measure includes $2.7 billion for storage projects, such as dams; $800 million for cleaning up contaminated underground water; and $725 million for water recycling projects. In addition, $1.5 billion will be dedicated to the protection and restoration of wildlife habitat and watersheds. The borrowing will be repaid from the state budget. The Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that it will cost an average of $360 million a year to pay off the bonds over about 40 years....

Related "Water Pollution" Articles

Proposition 1 has passed, AP reports. It authorizes state officials to borrow $7.12 billion and repurpose $425 million in bonds approved earlier to pay for new water projects.
The measure includes $2.7 billion for storage projects, such as...

Energy companies are fracking for oil and gas at far shallower depths than widely believed, sometimes through underground sources of drinking water, according to research released Tuesday by Stanford University scientists.
Though researchers cautioned...

Man has pumped tens of thousands of tons of mercury into the world’s oceans in the last 500 years, nearly tripling the amount of the toxic heavy metal in sea water, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The study, the...

It's been 45 years since a calamitous spill off Santa Barbara coated the picturesque coast with oil, killed wildlife and prompted tough new pumping restrictions. But new worries have emerged in Sacramento.
It turns out that there was an exemption in a...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will have to notify environmental groups when pollutants pass through the government dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon and Washington, in a groundbreaking settlement announced on Monday.
As part of...

The Government Accountability Office is calling on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to step up enforcement of water contamination and seismic activity associated with fracking, the high-pressure injection of fluids into wells to extract oil and...

A year after rail tanker cars carrying crude oil in Canada exploded and killed 47 people, California is stepping up efforts to prevent a similar disaster on tracks crisscrossing the state.
In recent weeks, the state began pumping more money into a new...

The Clean Water Act, which has been on the books since 1972,, has slowed the degradation of the nation's lakes, rivers and streams by blocking polluters from using waterways as sewers. Careful oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency has brought...

With a Sunday deadline for a state budget agreement, a proposed fee on oil transported by rail cars across California has emerged as a major target for opposition by oil companies and business lobbyists.
The controversial fee was proposed by the Brown...

A heated budget battle in Sacramento over more oil-spill protection for rivers, lakes and other inland bodies of water has prompted a last-minute lobbying blitz by formidable adversaries: the oil industry and environmentalists.
As the Legislature moves...

Although most people think of oil spills in California as potential beachfront disasters, there is new anxiety in Sacramento about the surge of crude oil now coming through the state each day by train.
Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers want to avoid the...

The Environmental Protection Agency and a top U.S. energy provider reached a settlement agreement Thursday in which the company agreed to clean up the remains of a February coal ash spill that contaminated 70 miles of river in North Carolina and Virginia....

There’s at least one upside to the drought: Record-low rainfall has resulted in cleaner water up and down the California coast, a new report says.
Ninety-five percent of California beaches earned A or B grades for water quality during the summer of 2013,...

When I was little, we had a neighbor around the block named Mel, and Mel had as a next-door neighbor a little boy — let's call him Jimmy — who would ask him often where he was going. And Mel would tell him that he was going to see the queen.
This kept up...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a long-running Los Angeles County case, handing a victory to environmentalists in a battle over polluted urban runoff that fouls Southern California's coastal waters.
The justices let stand a federal...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration proposed a long-awaited rule on Tuesday to clarify that the Clean Water Act protects wetlands near rivers and waterways fed by seasonal thaws and rains — a decision that could particularly shield water sources in...

SEATTLE — The Environmental Protection Agency took the first step Friday toward possibly halting construction of the largest open-pit mine in North America, declaring that Alaska's Bristol Bay — home to the most productive sockeye salmon fishery on...

SEATTLE – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took the first step Friday toward possibly halting construction of the largest open-pit mine in North America, declaring that Alaska’s Bristol Bay -- home to the most productive sockeye salmon fishery...

DURHAM, N.C. — North Carolina's environmental regulatory agency is under federal criminal investigation for its handling of a massive toxic coal ash spill into the Dan River near the Virginia border.
The U.S. attorney's office in Raleigh issued a...

Scientists have cracked a cellular biology mystery underlying a harmful effect oil spills have on fish: irregular heartbeats that can lead to cardiac arrest.
In studying the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on bluefin tuna spawning in...